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Shanghai: North-China Daily News & Herald, Ltd. 1925. 270pp + 30 plates. Pictorial yellow cloth. Very good. This title comes from the distinguished library of J. Fenwick Lansdowne (1937-2008), the award winning British Columbia artistand illustrator whose accurate and artistic depictions of birds are prized  around the world by museums and collectors. HIS ARTISTICALLY DESIGNED BOOKPLATE IS TIPPED IN. The paintings of James Fenwick Lansdowne have been compared to those of John James Audubon. That Lansdowne owned a deluxe, and costly edition of Audubon's work, the Bird of America which  suggests that Lansdowne not only prized Audubon's illustrations, found inspiration in them, but perhaps tried to emulate the American artist for his magisterial depiction of wildlife, in particular birds.  Lansdowne was born in Hong Kong and in 1940 moved to Victoria, British Columbia where he worked and resided for the rest of his life. When he was only 19 years old, the Royal Ontario Museum mounted an exhibition of his watercolours. He later went on to exhibit at the Smithsonian, the American Museum of Natural History, and Audubon House in New York. In the mid 1960s, he would go on to provide illustrations for bird books as well as limited edition prints based on the large watercolour and gouache paintings used to illustrate books. He is best known as the illustrator of sumptuous books.   Lansdowne was awarded the Order of Canada and made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1977, as an ornithological artist of wide renown, with the rare ability not only to be essentially correct in his paintings of birds, but to portray them so they seemingly come to life. In 1995, he received the Order of British Columbia.

pp. (xii), 270. (ii). Frontispiece, 19 plates, 108 text illustrations. Original natural hessian, end-papers a bit foxed and scattered marginal foxing, ex libris RICHARD FREEMAN [without his signature], a very good copy.

First edition, first printing, of this investigation of Chinese fish, amphibians, and reptiles, with the decorative bookplate of Stanley Wyatt-Smith (1887-1958), Senior District Officer at Weihaiwei and later Consul-General of Manila. Wyatt-Smith began his China consular career in 1907, holding a succession of postings in major cities including Hankou and Shanghai. A leading naturalist of his day, Arthur de Carle Sowerby (1885-1954) was born in Taiyuan, Shanxi, to a Baptist missionary. In the early 20th century, he began collecting specimens for the Taiyuan museum of natural history and subsequently joined the zoological Bedford expedition in 1906. Having served with the Chinese Labour Corps during the First World War, he returned to China and settled in Shanghai, where he founded the China Journal of Science and Arts. Two chapters discuss the blue sheep of Gansu and the former imperial hunting grounds. In the same decade as he published this account, Sowerby also released his three-volume magnum opus, The Naturalist in Manchuria (1922, 1923 & 1930). Czech, p. 196. Tall octavo. Original pale yellow cloth, spine and front cover lettered and with vignettes in brown. With half-tone frontispiece showing 5-foot salamander, 19 similar plates, sketches by author in text. Cloth lightly soiled, spine sunned, text and plates fresh, light browning to endpapers. A very good copy.